Corporate cards are a necessity, especially for staff that need to travel for work and entertain clients - it’s simply unfair to expect these employees to shoulder business costs on their personal cards. But it can be difficult to find the right corporate card provider - especially if you’re an Australian Small-to-Medium Enterprise (SME), since banks tend to favour working with larger companies.
In any case, this decision is an important one, as the implications of choosing the wrong provider can be painful - for both members of the finance team and cardholding employees.
But which one is right for your business? In this post we’ll discuss all of these options, as well as what you should ultimately look for when choosing a corporate card provider.
There are several options that you can choose from; traditional options like corporate credit cards or business credit cards, and the newest option in-market; prepaid corporate cards.
Traditional options:
With corporate credit cards, you would contact a bank to issue credit cards to your staff members. Typically, if you are in a large company (ie. if your business generates millions of dollars in revenue), this is the best option, because you get a high level of service from the bank, and you can negotiate more perks.
The option most small businesses are left with (because they don’t meet the annual revenue requirements to qualify for corporate credit cards) is to use business credit cards. The cons in this case is that you can only issue a few cards at once (these are typically only shared among senior management - leading to employees sharing cards) and you have no control over how cards are used.
If you’re considering one of these options, make sure you consider:
This is a relatively new option - using a platform like Budgetly, small businesses can issue preloaded corporate cards to staff. There are several benefits to choosing this option when compared with the previous two:
If you’re considering this option, make sure you consider:
There are some features to look for regardless of whether you’re going with a corporate credit card, business credit card or a prepaid corporate card provider:
If you’re an Australian SME, a prepaid corporate card and expense management platform like Budgetly is probably the best option, because traditional cards are limited in terms of flexibility and control (and we’re not just being biased, there’s a reason that this solution was created, after all!). if you’d like to learn more about Budgetly, download our eBook, Managing expenses with Budgetly.
Or, if you’re interested in seeing how it works, feel free to schedule a demo.